Fact-checking Trump’s speech in Everett

Originally published August 31, 2016 at 3:17 pm
Updated August 31, 2016 at 7:05 pm

Fact check: Donald Trump correctly described Seattle’s heroin problem and the percentage of Washington Latino children in low-income homes during his rally Tuesday in Everett. But he also told a couple of whoppers.

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What Trump said: “This really has to do with people coming into our country that can’t be properly vetted. We have no idea where they’re coming from. There is no paperwork.”

Fact check: Trump’s suggestion that there is no paperwork or serious vetting of Syrian refugees is false.

The refugee-screening process can take two years and includes in-person interviews, database searches, fingerprinting and other measures. Syrian refugees are singled out for even tougher screening, including iris (eye) scans.

The screening starts with the United Nations refugee agency, which forwards only a tiny fraction of applicants to the U.S. for additional review.

“The significant amount of paperwork that it takes for a refugee to be settled in the United States is daunting,” said Sarah Peterson, Washington state’s refugee coordinator. “There are tremendous paper trails.”

However, PolitiFact has noted that law-enforcement officials, including FBI Director James Comey, have expressed concern over potential data gaps with refugees from Syria and other conflict zones.

Seattle heroin deaths

What Trump said: “The Seattle area recently experienced the largest number of heroin-related deaths, think of it, in 20 years. The largest number in 20 years. It’s getting worse. It’s getting horrific.”

Heroin-related deaths declined by 15 percent from that peak last year, but health officials said the problem remained severe.

Poverty and race

What Trump said: As part of a riff arguing that Democrats have failed minority communities, Trump got local with one statistic. He said: “Here in the state of Washington, 65 percent of Latino children and 60 percent of African-American children live in low-income households.”

Fact check: As of a few years ago at least, Trump’s statistics were accurate. The liberal Washington Budget and Policy Center cited those figures in a poverty fact sheet released in 2014.

Iraq war

What Trump said: Seeking to contrast his judgment with Clinton’s, Trump said the former secretary of state had made “one bad foreign- policy decision after another, beginning with her support for going to war in Iraq in the first place — which I opposed.”

Fact check: Trump has repeatedly claimed he was a farseeing oracle who opposed the Iraq war from the get-go. But it’s not true.

As several fact-checking organizations have pointed out, there is no evidence Trump opposed the war before it started. In September 2002, he told radio host Howard Stern he supported invading Iraq. It was only after the war was under way that Trump started criticizing it.